Vulgar, crude, and occasionally scandalous in its racial humor, this hilarious bad-taste spoof of Westerns, co-written by Richard Pryor, features Cleavon Little as the first black sheriff of a stunned town scheduled for demolition by an encroaching railroad. Little and co-star Gene Wilder have great chemistry, and the delightful supporting cast includes Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, and Madeline Kahn as a chanteuse modelled on Marlene Dietrich. As in Young Frankenstein 1974, Silent Movie 1976, and High Anxiety 1977, director/writer Mel Brooks gives a burlesque spin to a classic Hollywood movie genre; in his own manic, Borscht Belt way, Brooks was a central player in revising classic genres in light of Seventies values and attitudes, an effort most often associated with such directors as Robert Altman and Peter Bogdanovich . Some of this film's sequences, notably a gaseous bean dinner around a campfire, have become comedy classics.
9
Items on this list68%
Average Rating14h 33m
Total Runtime$391.5M
Total Revenue-
October 28, 1970
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February 7, 1974
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December 15, 1974
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June 17, 1976
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December 25, 1977
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June 12, 1981
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December 16, 1983
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June 24, 1987
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July 28, 1993